system of systemic

No amount of talking no volume no book will change the behavior of blowhards and crooks; they are but a symptom of systemic rot; they are not anomalies by a long-shot; they sprout up among us like vermin to feed on our insecurities worry and greed. It seems that their coming could not be avoided that we on these lower rungs must be exploited and lied to by rich fucks who stand up and claim that though they reaped profits their hands are unstained. These slags hide their monies in offshore accounts yet when caught red-handed do not then pay out or feed public coffers or give their fair share; that cash is all their own - not yours or mine, theirs. Each day they take more from us, these plutocrats; they drain us like leeches then hoard like pack-rats then convince their buddies in the Congress hall to bail out and shield them when banks they own fall. It’s simple enough for a dummy to learn: most of us will toil rejected and spurned whereas there’s a handful of blokes so wealthy that theirs is America, sea to bright sea. This here situation is not new but old; it’s found in plays the ancient Greeks themselves told; it cannot be fixed for that’s just how man works - he steals from poor children and gives to rich jerks.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

freedom to choose

Some time ago, NPR aired a debate about whether or not Pennsylvania should sell off the liquor stores it owns and operates. During this debate, a woman advocated for the rights of consumers to have access to the best possible selection of booze, saying that choice is freedom and that freedom is the American way. (The author is paraphrasing here). Since 1971, the federal government of the United States of America has waged war on the right of every person under its jurisdiction to choose for himself which drugs to introduce to his body; since passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971 (CSA), Liberty has been under constant and incessant attack from local, state, and federal government, the very agents who should have been protecting her, all along.

When the state makes some drugs illegal (weed, coke) while profiting from and promoting the sale of other drugs (alcohol, nicotine), it chooses sides, sending millions of non-violent persons to jail for wanting to do with their bodies as they saw best fit. The XIV amendment to the Constitution was designed to protect against just such governmental overreach, stating: “[no] State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law[.]” If a person should demonstrate an inability to handle certain drugs without posing a threat to himself or others, he should be banned from consuming those drugs. Individuals, however, who have not been banned by a judge from smoking weed should feel free to do so as often as they wish; no aspect of the Constitution gives any branch of our government the right to infringe upon the common freedom of all individuals living in America by passing a law as destructive to our inalienable and immutable rights as is the tyrannical Controlled Substances Act of 1971.

In the 42 years since adoption of the CSA, the business of punishing and incarcerating non-violent Americans for consuming and possessing their drugs of choice has become big business. Lawyers, judges, parole and police officers, wardens, jail builders, and drug warlords all continue to profit from the ban on certain drugs. We the People must make the right to choose inalienable once more and strike down the prohibitions currently in place; then, the individuals just mentioned would have to go out and get jobs of actual usefulness instead of being allowed to game a system that punishes freedom-loving Americans for pursuing their Happiness as they see best fit. A person's body is the only piece of property he cannot live without; he may do with it as he pleases so long as he is not infringing demonstrably upon the right of any other person to life, liberty, or property. To lock someone up for changing his brain chemistry by smoking weed is no different from locking him up for changing his brain chemistry by eating a large bowl of sugary breakfast cereal. Let us realign ourselves with this nation's founding principles and legalize the freedom to choose by ending the madness that has brutalized Liberty every day for the past 15,330 days. Fight tyranny; act freely; defend Liberty. Mahalo. 

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

interstate bicycle pathways

In the middle of the last century, American President Dwight D. Eisenhower envisioned a highway system ambitious in both scope and design. It pioneered new techniques (the clover-leaf interchange), spawned new ways of living (the suburb), and provided wanderlustig individuals with a relatively cheap method of traveling for both business and pleasure. But every silver lining has its cloud, and, today, Americans' dependence on petrol-carbohydrates is destroying the environment and helping to fund terrorism around the world. If we expect to keep breathing air and fitting into our jeans, we need to utilize a time-tested and reliable device largely ignored since the beginning of the automobile age: the bicycle.

Imagine ribbons of road stretching from Boston to Miami and from New York to Los Angeles, roads designed and built exclusively for bicycles. Imagine being able to bicycle to work each day without having to worry about getting sucked into the wake of a passing semi-truck. Imagine saving money and losing weight while pedaling a bicycle instead of spending money and getting fat while sitting in a car. The automobile isn't called the slave's chariot for nothing – it demands of its user ever and ever greater sacrifices without doing much to improve his financial or physical health or that of the environment. This author has been bicycling instead of driving for the past ten months in a town built around the car, and even though he contends daily with individuals who will pass him in the breakdown lane so that they can be the first in line at the next red light, he still feels sympathy for the poor fools who willingly trap themselves in mobile prisons of glass and steel.

Prosperity through sacrifice! Safety through knowledge! Happiness through exertion! These are the slogans that will drum up support for America's interstate bicycle pathways (IBP). Not only will the IBP create new manufacturing and service jobs in communities around the country (think of all those bikes breaking down and getting flat tires), it will cut this country's reliance on dirty, sadness-inducing oil and gas products. Furthermore, new developments in battery technology as well as cheaper and more efficient solar panels have prompted bike makers to equip velocipedes with electric motors for help on hills and super-efficient coasting. The author is not calling for the construction of an entirely new web of roads spanning from coast to coast, merely that the bike trails that already exist be linked to one another with dedicated, bicycle-only riding paths. In the Netherlands, roughly 27% of all trips are done on bicycle, whereas in the United States of America, less than 5% are. Difficulties of comparison aside, bicycling is a viable form of transportation even in places where the winters are harsh and the North Sea winds are strong. For the past year, the author has dreamed about being able to bicycle into Philadelphia from his house nearly a hundred miles away, but the most direct route – 30, the Lincoln Highway – is a traffic-choked road that was not designed to handle both driver and velocipedist. Adding insult to injury, the nearest commercial bus station lies more than twenty miles from his front door, and the most efficient method for reaching it is on a road even narrower and less bicycle-friendly than Route 30. Some day, fellow pedal-mashers, we will convince the slave's charioteers of the error of their ways, and get everyone back on the saddle. Until then, however, keep your clothes tight, your eyes and ears open, and your head on a swivel. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

lazy organic gardening

(Most of the knowledge passed on in this article comes from a few dozen Organic Gardening magazines I found in a dust-and-cobweb-covered stack in the barn. While printed in the late 1970s and early '80s, they contain timeless wisdom and much good advice.)

Throughout the spring and summer of 2012, this author has been conducting an experiment in lazy organic gardening (LOG). Among the benefits of LOG are a decreased workload, a drastic reduction in gardening-related stress, and three gardening plots nearly indistinguishable from their neighbors, wildflower-filled fallow fields. The inspiration for this method came in part from the Tao Teh Ching, specifically verse 7, in which Lao Tzu (via Jonathan Star, who provides the best translation of the text I have yet found) asks what an individual could do that the universe has not already accomplished for him, or her. Liking the sound of this notion and attempting to put it into practice, I started by digging out the plots to sixteen inches before setting in a three-inch-thick layer of composted leaves and grass, to which I added generous handfuls of bio-charred bamboo (wood-charcoal works just as well) before piling the dug-out soil back on. When planting, I applied thick layers of mulch around each newly-transplanted seedling (mulch was mostly cut grass with some leaves and twigs mixed in). (Next year, I shall raise my seedlings in a cold frame in hopes of a greater success rate, which this year was a dismal 15%). Then, I stepped away and waited, watering the plots (partly via small-scale drip irrigation) only when the first six inches of soil dried out.

Among the benefits of thick and early mulching include almost no weed growth and preservation of the soil's inherent, natural moisture balance. Bio-charring contributed to the vigorous and healthy growth of those few plants that survived my poor seedling-raising protocols, among them crook-neck squash, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, string beans, and green peppers. Pollination occurred quickly at both plot sites (two near the house, the other across the stream), given their proximity to large growths of jewel-weed, native and healing grasses (plantago lanceolata, p. major, taraxacum offinale, oxalis acetosella), and patches of wild blackberries that attract legions of industrious honey-bees which have made this little valley their home. At no point in the plants' life-cycles did this whorphan pull weeds, pick bugs, or apply chemical agents; the plants were left at the mercy of Mother Nature, who was fair in her attentions, sending pest-eating paper wasps to patrol the crops but also blighting a number of plantings, among them the cabbage and broccoli, which were completely destroyed. (This was an attempt to put the Taoist verse referenced above into practice by allowing the universe to grow the plants and to keep them healthy.)

For next year's growing seasons, I plan to take things further by trying a no-till method in which seedlings are transplanted directly into small, watered, composted holes in the lawn itself. Furthermore, I shall plant directly into the plot I made by dropping a four-layer-thick pad of cardboard (pizza boxes) onto the lawn and covering it with twelve inches of grass and leaves. (The original foot of material has composted itself down to just few inches, which I have covered with another foot of the same.) I aim to find (and perpetuate) varieties that grow well both in this clay-filled soil and in the local atmospheric variances, which include high summer heat, soggy springs and falls, and windy, cold winters. The ultimate coup for this lazy organic gardener would be to make tame crop species wild again so that they would offer their bounty to anyone passing by, blessing the bodies of persons-in-the-know with organic roughage and healthful trace minerals and strengthening the immune systems of persons brave enough to eat unwashed produce straight from the ground. Such is the life of the organic whorphan, he who would rather watch his plants get eaten alive than break out noxious chemicals; but to pump complex compounds into the soil and the air would be to try to do for myself what the universe has already accomplished, which, for now, is an abundance of fresh, organic vegetables. Huzzah, and, mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on the slave's chariot

Oh, how much we Americans suffer for our petty conveniences, and how terribly we abuse the Earth to maintain them. It is not entirely our fault, perhaps, that we lock ourselves in shiny metal boxes whose insides are constantly exploding – in part, our opinions have been shaped by a century of false intelligence that touts the benefits of the automobile and its socialist highway network while obfuscating the true cost of motor-vehicle ownership. Imagine someone today describing the car's negative effects – suburban sprawl, pollution, high maintenance costs, the alienation of the individual from society – and imagine your reaction. Would you jump for joy? Would you sign up at your local dealership in order to spend a year's salary on a combustion-driven steel battering-ram that is lined with miles of tiny wires and sensitive rubber hoses? Would you say, “Of course, Mr. Ford, Toyota-San, Herr Benz, of course I shall take on that second job so that I can drive to work, to school, to the store, to the post office, back to the store, to school a second time, perhaps to a publick-house, and then to my home?” If you are an clear-thinking and self-respecting American living today, your answer may not be the resounding Yes issued by previous generations.

One of the main reasons that we mere three hundred millions of Americans use more gasoline than billions of other people combined is that we have transformed our society into one that is wholly dependent on the automobile – we wantonly waste petroleum and wage war over oil because we choose to perpetuate self-enslavement to the notion that one's body can be moved around through space-time without expending much physical effort rather than to accommodate and promote the frugal and simple life of the bicyclist.

Compared to the slave-charioteer, the smog-rider knows how hard it is to move her body around, and that certain things take time, and that certain things take effort, and because she knows these things, she plans ahead and maintains time discipline while seeing to her own physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. By liberating herself from the artificial demands of a lumbering blunderbox filled with volatile chemicals, she keeps her soul free of sadness, discontent, and desire. By fixing her bicycle and keeping it road-worthy for an entire year for less cost than a single oil change, she spends her resources wisely. Her mouth, not a twisted metal pipe, is her exhaust port; her beating heart, not a cast-iron maze of tubes, is the motor that drags her across the phaltscape; her legs, not a row of oil-drenched, whirling plugs, are the pistons that turn the crank that sees her on her way.

The velocipedist, her heart buoyant and her soul aroused, lives the life of honest and healthy labor, while the car driver, that poor wretch sitting in his glass prison of perpetual payment, lives the life of one enslaved to the demands of a hardwood-accented beast. His mount of choice requires specialized and costly repairs, whereas the cyclist can pinpoint and fix problems easily and while on the go; his conveyance is the nation's problem, the bicycle, it's solution. Therefore, dear reader, please consider switching from a high-cost slave's chariot to a low-cost wire horse, and rejoice as your spirits, and your savings, rise.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on simplicity in cycling

  Increasing numbers of urban bicyclists are abandoning multi-gear propulsion systems in favor of less complex mechanisms with fewer moving parts. In theory, a mechanical system with few moving parts is less prone to failure than a system with many moving parts, as the more complex system contains more elements that could fail (think of the many levers, wires, and gear-wheels on a ten-speed bicycle compared to the single gear-wheel on a child's bike). Among the individuals rediscovering the fixed-gear or single-gear propulsion system are urban bicycle messengers.

  The rugged and far-ranging operator known as the bicycle messenger traverses dozens of miles of urban landscape in varying weather conditions carrying heavy and unwieldy packages on her back. In her effort to maximize her workable hours by reducing repair- and maintenance-related down time, the bike messenger put to use one of the most simple bicycle-specific propulsion systems she could find – the fixed-gear.

  While the simplicity and reliability of the fixed-gear propulsion system has gained wide popularity in recent years, I have re-discovered an even more simple system for propelling myself forward by bicycle – by pushing off with the foot from vertical surfaces or from the ground. While perusing randomly a tome-like dictionary at Central Library, I stumbled across a picture of the early bicycle, upon which the rider moves forward by pushing off from poles, hydrants, curbstones, etc.

  In this picture we can see that the device is missing standing-fins upon which the operator might rest his feet and balance (which would be included on a modern design). There is no mechanical propulsion system, and the wheels roll freely in any direction. On the one hand, this device is merely a large, steerable scooter upon which the operator can sit; the omission of a propulsion system other than the kicking leg may be too much for the velocipedist who faces hills or whose routes lack vertical surfaces. On the other hand, urban environments are filled with vertical surfaces the operator might kick from (electrical poles, parking meters, and street signs, to name a few), and most of Earth's cities are flat and covered with layers of asphalt (which makes for a smoother ride).

  People with whom I have spoken have voiced their disdain for the fixed-gear bicyclist – they claim he has retreated too far into the bicycle's past. They deride him for seeming to have abandoned needlessly the improvements made to Baron von Drais' original design. Perhaps, however, the smog-riding bike messenger he has not retreated far enough.

  Long live the vondrais!

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp